


and we found our song and we found our truth

by awkwardspiritanimals



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/M, Truth Spells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 12:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20447000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardspiritanimals/pseuds/awkwardspiritanimals
Summary: Rafael Barba wakes up one morning and finds that he’s compelled to tell the truth.It’s a less than ideal situation.





	and we found our song and we found our truth

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for memories of canonical child abuse and what I'm going to call truth curse inflicted physical pain.

It starts on a cold but otherwise unremarkable Wednesday in early March, at the coffee cart in front of the courthouse while Jayson, the kid who works most mornings, is making his usual order.

“How’s it going, Mr. Barba?” he asks, like he usually does, and Rafael opens his mouth to respond in the way he usually would, with a  _ Fine _ and a question about how Jayson’s father is doing, if the cold has made his arthritis flare up.

Except what he actually says is: “I’ve got a trial starting tomorrow that’s caught between being one we should absolutely prosecute because this victim and other victims like her deserve justice, and being one where taking it to trial just ends up making everything worse for her because I can’t get a guilty verdict, and then I end up looking stupid and reckless. Obviously that’s a secondary concern, but it’s still on the list.

“And in general, I’m really not sure anymore how many of these tricky cases I’m taking because I think I should and I believe I can win, and how many I’m taking because Liv wants me to, or what that means either for my job or my relationship with her.”

Jayson is looking at him with wide eyes, holding out his coffee.

“I- That- I’m sorry,” Rafael says, quickly exchanging the bills in his hand for the cup. “Keep the change.” It seems like the least he can do after that, and he hurries away from the cart as quickly as he can without looking like he’s actually fleeing.

He’s going to choose to blame whatever that was on lack of sleep, since it’s been a week of late nights spent working on this case. The perp doesn’t deserve anything close to the deal Rafael is going to offer him, but the victim has already been through a lot and wants to avoid a trial if it’s at all feasible. He knows it will leave a sour taste in Olivia’s mouth as well as his own to cut a deal with this guy and Buchanan, but the case is tricky enough without potentially putting the victim through the ordeal of testifying when she would rather not.

Carmen looks up from her desk as he reaches his office.

“Morning, Mr. Barba. You have a meeting with Mr. Buchanan and his client at nine.”

“Fuck. I don’t want to do that.”

“Sorry?”

“Buchanan’s an asshole, and his client’s much worse than that. I really don’t want to speak with either of them, much less have a meeting where I offer to cut them a deal that neither of them deserve.” Carmen looks baffled, a feeling Rafael shares despite the fact that the words had come out of his own mouth. “Let me know when they get here.”

If this meeting goes well, he’ll be able to get a decent night’s sleep and his brain will stop doing… whatever this is. If it doesn’t, well… He really hopes the meeting goes well.

\------------

“You can’t possibly be expecting my client to take this deal.”

“This is a much better deal than your client deserves,” Rafael says, which is… borderline, but certainly not something he would  _ never _ say. Maybe the caffeine has kicked in and his brain is back in control of his mouth.

“Regardless of your opinion on the matter, Mr. Barba, my client will not be accepting.” Buchanan and his client don’t even bother to hide the smug looks they exchange.

“Then he’s making a huge mistake.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your client is turning down a deal he doesn’t deserve because he’s a rapist and a scumbag, which means I get to look forward to getting him convicted as such by a jury of his peers. Not as a scumbag, I suppose, since that’s not a legal term, but I think it’ll be implied.”

And that’s… almost definitely crossing a line, and if the look on Buchanan’s face is anything to go by, he agrees.

He stands with a huff, adjusting his jacket. His client, red-faced, does the same.

“Then we’ll see you in court, Mr. Barba.”

Once the two men have disappeared down the hallway, Rafael drops his face into his hands. He knows that Carmen would guard the door so he could close his eyes for an hour or so if he asked her, but he also knows that he won’t get much actual rest, not now that he knows there will be a trial he needs to prepare for. Maybe once a date has been set, he’ll be able to manage a full night’s sleep, and until then, he’ll just have to deal with whatever is going on. He sends Olivia an update and stands to start a pot of coffee.

The knock on his door an hour later isn’t unexpected, and he looks up to find Olivia standing in the doorway.

“They wouldn’t take the deal?”

“They were never going to. He doesn’t think he did anything wrong, and Buchanan is sure he’s going to win.”

“Alright,” she says with a sigh, “What do you need from me?”

“I need you to trust that I can get this done,” he says, immediately fighting the blush he can feel climbing up his cheeks when she raises her eyebrows, “And, uh, I’ll need you to talk to her, explain what comes next. I’ll help with prep, of course, but I think it’s best if you talk to her first.”

“Sure. I’ll keep you updated.” Olivia turns to leave, but she stops in the doorway and looks back at him. “Everything okay with you, Rafa?”

“I haven’t gotten enough sleep the past few weeks,” he says, and it feels different than when he’d blurted things out to Jayson and Carmen, the words heavy in his mouth, like he had needed to choose them very carefully, and somehow he knows that if he’d attempted to say  _ I’m fine  _ or  _ it’s nothing  _ like he normally would have, he never would have managed to get the words out at all.

Olivia gives him an understanding and sympathetic look. “We’ll get this done, and then you can catch up. We all can.”

“Sounds like a good plan, if not a particularly realistic one,” he says, and then he can feel the irresistible urge to say what’s on his mind rising again, “You look very nice today.”

Olivia laughs as she leaves the office. “Not as nice as you, Barba.”

The combination of relief and disappointment that she thinks he’s joking makes his chest ache just a little.

\-------------

After he spends a few hours sitting in his office, worrying about what is happening to him and not actually getting much work done, he decides it’s best if he tells someone. A burden shared and all.

Unfortunately, he comes to the conclusion that the best person to tell is Rita.

“So what weird problem do you have that you couldn’t talk about on the phone?” she asks, sitting down across from him in the restaurant. Her voice is dripping with mockery, and he starts to say something snarky back but what comes out is-

“I think I’m under some sort of truth curse.”

He hadn’t planned on coming out with it like that, especially since he’s aware how ridiculous it sounds, but the fact that he doesn’t have a choice is why he’d called her. Sleep deprivation had been an easy excuse this morning, but he’s spent most of his adult life not getting enough sleep, and nothing like this has ever happened before. And if he’d been drugged somehow, that would only explain the random outbursts of truth, not the fact that he hasn’t been able to tell so much as a simple fib all day. 

“Okay,” Rita says, sighing heavily, “As amusing as I find your jokes, or whatever this is, I have a meeting at two, so I’d really appreciate it if you’d just tell me whatever your actual problem is. If you wanted to have lunch, you could have just invited me like a normal person.”

“I’m not lying. I don’t think I can.”

Rita considers him for a few seconds, and then leans back in her chair. “...Okay. For real?”

He’ll give her this: Rita Calhoun can go from totally annoyed at him to on his side faster than just about anyone else.

“As far as I can tell. I keep blurting out whatever I’m thinking, things I would never normally say, and I can’t seem to say anything that’s not true.”

“Okay,” she repeats, leaning back in her chair, “This does sound like exactly the kind of weird shit that would happen to you, Barba, so congratulations on that. You really think it’s magic?”

“I’ve spent all morning trying to think of a more logical explanation that explains it, but I haven’t found anything more likely.”

“More likely than  _ magic _ ?”

“It’s been quite a morning. I poured my heart out to the kid who sells me coffee, basically told Buchanan what I think of him and his client in our meeting, and I told Liv she looked nice.”

“The horror,” she says, with an exaggerated shudder, and he rolls his eyes.

“It’s not that I’ve never said it to her before, it just… wasn’t really appropriate to say it in my office right after we’d finished talking about a case.”

“You and your rules for when and where you’re allowed to give Olivia Benson compliments.” She holds up a hand when he opens his mouth. “Please don’t explain to me again about how it’s complicated.”

“I wasn’t going to say that it’s complicated. I was going to say it’s because I’m scared.”

She gapes at him for a few seconds. “Wow. There really is something going on with you.”

“I told you.”

Rafael resists the urge to sniffle like a little kid, even though he can feel a combination of embarrassment and frustration welling up in his throat. This is going to get old very fast; it’s one thing to spill his guts to Rita, who knows most, if not all, of his secrets already, and another thing entirely to spill them to everyone he encounters.

Rita narrows her eyes at him, considering. “Brain tumors can cause a loss of inhibitions. Maybe you just have a grapefruit-sized tumor sitting in the middle of your skull?”

“As cheering a thought as that is, I’m pretty sure degeneration like that happens over time with a tumor. This was literally overnight, because yesterday I was fine.”

“That’s debatable, but alright. Maybe it’s some other, faster-acting degenerative brain thing? You don’t want to go to a doctor, just to make sure?”

“No, because if I go to a doctor, I’m going to have to tell him that I think I’m under some sort of truth curse. I won’t have a choice. And he’ll probably do a CT scan or whatever sort of scan they do for people who come in claiming that they are compulsively telling the truth, and if I don’t have a degenerative brain disease or a massive tumor, I will still have to continue to insist that I am being prevented from lying by a mysterious force beyond my control. That sounds like a good way to get myself committed.”

“You make a good point. So what are you going to do? You can’t just call in sick and hope it goes away in a couple of days, not with this case you and Benson are on.”

“That’s why I called you, I thought you might have some ideas. Also you seemed like the safest person to tell.”

“Aw, Barba, I’m flattered. Personally, I think you’re shit out of luck, but I’ll give it some thought.”

He sighs. Definitely going to get old fast.

\-------------

“Good work, Barba,” Olivia says as she stands to walk next to him down the hallway, but he can tell she’s fighting a smile. Once they’re safely behind his office door, she turns to him with a grin. “That was… I really thought that one might be nearly impossible.”

“Nearly?” He slides his briefcase onto his desk and leans back against it.

“Well, I had to have believed you could do it, right? Otherwise I wouldn’t have brought you the case.”

“I think we both know you might have tried it either way.”

“Well,  _ I _ think that just shows what tremendous faith I have in you,” she says, grinning, and he can’t help returning it. She must really be giddy on the win, if she’s so willing to stroke his ego like this, but he’s not about to complain about a happy, relaxed, pleased with him Olivia.

“With faith like that, a man could do almost anything,” he says, and while under normal circumstances it isn’t something he would probably say, he doesn’t feel embarrassed in the way he has so many times over the past few days. Not here, just he and Olivia, not when she’s moved to lean against his desk at his side, close enough that their shoulders touch.

“Promises, promises, Barba.” She leans a little bit more of her weight against him, and she’s very close now. He can feel the warmth swelling in his chest at her happiness, her nearness, and he’s so distracted by all of it that he almost misses the signs he’s started to recognize for what is about to happen.

_ I love you,  _ he thinks, and then his whole body goes rigid. He knows that Olivia feels it, but he can’t concentrate on her reaction because he has to focus on keeping his jaw clenched and swallowing down what his brain is suddenly compelling him to say.

The compulsion eases after a few seconds, but he only gets a moment of relief before pain blooms in his chest, sharp and hot. Rafael gasps, pressing a fist against his sternum like that will somehow ease the ache.

“Rafa?” Olivia asks, trying to catch his gaze, and he forces himself to look at her and breathe slowly and evenly, pushing the pain to the back of his mind.

“Probably had too much coffee today,” he says, after testing out a few phrases in his head the way he’s learned to since this began.

“I didn’t know you believed that was possible,” she replies, but he can tell she’s still worried, dubious about his explanation. He silently begs her not to ask anything more specific, because he’s not sure he can focus enough past the pain to come up with another excuse that the curse will actually let him say, and not to touch him, because he’s pretty sure it would start the whole thing over again, even though he desperately wants the comfort, even if it was just a hand on his arm.

“You should go, get home to Noah. I’ll be fine,” he says, which he thinks is really only true if she leaves, but apparently the curse has decided to let him get away with that one.

“Okay.” Olivia pushes away from his desk, but turns back to face him. “You really did do an excellent job with this one, Rafa.”

“Thank you. It means a lot that you think so, and that you’d say it.” Saying that eases some of tightness in his chest, and he’s at least a little tempted to blurt out a hundred other true things, if it will make the pain go away, if it will let him keep this one secret.

It’s only several minutes after she’s left that the pain finally disappears, and Rafael leans back against his desk once more, rubbing at his chest.

\----------------

“I would know if you were a witch, right? I probably would have noticed by now if you could cast magic spells?”

Rita laughs. “Yeah, I think you would know if I could cast magical truth curses on people.”

He’s stretched out on Rita’s couch, nursing his third glass of wine, because getting sort of drunk on a friend’s couch worrying about what he might say feels less pathetic than laying on his own couch doing the same thing.

“Besides, even if I was a witch, I’d never do anything this subtle,” Rita says, refilling her own glass.

“Making me blurt out whatever true thing is on my mind is subtle?”

“I would have gone with something like rearranging the clouds to spell out  _ Rafael Barba loves Olivia Benson _ and then left you to deal with the fallout.”

“Thank God you’re not a witch.” He stares up at the ceiling. “I’m going to ask one of the squad if they’ll help me.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to need help limiting situations where I want to tell Olivia I’m in love with her, and they’re the only ones in a position to help me. At one point today the pain got so bad I could barely see straight.”

“What’d she do this time? Smile at you?”

Rafael sets his wine down on the floor, turning so he can press his face into one of the throw pillows, although he knows she can still hear him.

“She gave me a compliment.”

“Jesus Christ, Barba. At this rate, you’ll be dead by the end of the week.”

“Hence the asking for help. Hopefully that will buy me enough time to figure out how to stop whatever this is.”

“I’ll help too, when I can. Although if you haven’t figured out how to stop this by now, you might really be a lost cause. But you’re my lost cause,” she says, voice going sarcastically sweet, and Rafael laughs.

“I’m glad we’re friends,” he says, and then winces. It isn’t that he doesn’t think Rita knows that, or that he’s never said it before in different ways, or even said it exactly like that before, but being forced to say it leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

He thinks Rita understands that somehow, because she slides the bottle across the table so he can refill his glass.

\-----------------

He isn’t going to tell Rollins, and he sure as hell isn’t going to tell Carisi, which means he ends up telling Fin.

Which means he ends up standing in an interrogation room with Fin glaring at him.

“You really expect me to believe that this is why you’ve been acting weird lately?”

“I can’t imagine any possible benefit to telling you that this is going on if I was just making it up,” Rafael says, “I suppose if you wanted you could ask me a question that you feel sure I’d lie about under any other circumstances.”

That feels dangerous, and the look on Fin’s face doesn’t soothe his nerves any, but he doesn’t have much choice. Even the short walk across the bullpen to ask Fin if he could speak with him had felt like a minefield of potentially spilled secrets, and Olivia hadn’t even emerged from her office.

“Ok. You in love with Liv?”

“Of course I am.” That seems like it defeats the purpose a bit, but the most important thing is not telling  _ Olivia _ . Besides, it wouldn’t have been a good question to use to test him if Fin didn’t already feel confidant that he knew the answer.

“And you need my help to keep you from saying that to Liv?”

“Yes.”

“What happens when you don’t tell her?”

“My chest aches. That’s why I need your help, to distract her when it inevitably happens. If she notices what is going on, she’ll ask me about it and I’ll-”

“You’ll have to tell her, yeah, I got it. You sure you can handle this? Chest pain’s no joke.”

“I’ve got a lot of practice hiding the fact that I’m in pain,” he says, and he’s indescribably glad in that moment that he’d told Fin instead of any of the others, because Carisi and Rollins would both make some sort of deal about it, and Olivia would be… well, she’d be Olivia about it, and he is uniquely unable to deal with that at the moment. But Fin just nods, understanding that he doesn’t want to talk about it, he doesn’t want to be forced into admitting he doesn’t want to talk about it, or risk being forced into talking about it.

He’s pretty proud of himself for putting his plan into place without any real hiccups, so of course Olivia is walking past interrogation as he and Fin leave the room. She stops, raising her eyebrows at the two of them.

“Everything okay?”

“Barba just needed to talk to me real quick about my testimony in the Montgomery case,” Fin says, before Rafael can even open his mouth, “But Calhoun just called in a huff about something, so he’s on his way out.”

“I have to go,” he says, when Olivia turns to him, which is true if only where it concerns his own well-being.

“Alright.” He can tell that she thinks something is going on, but she’s not suspicious enough to say anything about it. “See you, Barba. Good luck with Rita.”

“Thanks.”

As he walks away, he congratulates himself on making it through an interaction with Olivia without so much as a flash of pain in his chest.

\---------------

When he’d told Fin he had a lot of practice hiding the fact that he was in pain, he’d been thinking of broken ribs.

The ache in his chest is deeper and more internal, blooming behind his sternum, but he can’t help connecting it with those times he’d ended up with broken ribs at his father’s hands and they couldn’t afford to go to the hospital, either financially or because it had happened too soon after the last time and they couldn’t afford an observant nurse noticing another visit. He hated associating those memories to something so connected with Olivia, even something painful, but the basic principles are pretty much the same.

Focus on his breathing and move as little as possible. Put the pain in one box, put the desire to tell someone, to tell  _ anyone _ he thought might listen, in another, and get on with his life. His teachers couldn’t find out but he couldn’t afford to miss school, so any pain he showed had to be temporary, a bruise he’d gotten playing with friends or a muscle he’d slept on wrong. Unless the breaks were bad enough to be life-threatening, there wasn’t much the doctors could do for broken ribs; he just had to wait until the breaks healed and the pain stopped.

He thinks that, with Fin’s help, he can put all that experience into practice and keep at least a few of his secrets, keep his biggest and most important one, without having to tell anyone else what is going on.

That plan lasts exactly two days.

\-------------

Rollins bursts into the crib, and Rafael would glare at Fin for doing a poor job at guarding the door, but he’s finally stopped throwing up and he really needs to concentrate on catching his breath.

“What the hell, Barba? Are you sick?”

“No,” he says, closing his eyes and tilting his head back against the wall, but not before he sees her roll her eyes.

“Seriously, if you’re sick, you’re not doing anyone any good here, being a stubborn jackass. If you give me and Liv whatever virus you’ve got to take home to Jesse and Noah, I’ll-”

“I’m not sick, Rollins.”

“Are you hungover? Or still drunk? I swear to God, Barba-”

“Of course not.”

“Maybe you should just tell her, man,” Fin says, leaning against the wall, and Rollins looks between them but doesn’t ask what he’s talking about, which Rafael appreciates because it means he has a choice.

“She’s probably more likely to believe it coming from you.”

Fin shrugs, but he turns to Rollins. “He’s got some sort of truth curse thing going on. Can’t lie, keeps blurting out what he’s thinking. Don’t know what’s causing it.”

“Okay… Even if I believe you guys, that doesn’t really explain the vomiting.”

“Think you should take this one, Barba.”

“Every time I want to tell Liv that I love her and I stop myself, my chest aches.”

“And what, it was bad enough that it made you sick?”

“It gets worse every time.” Olivia had asked if he’d wanted to stay for lunch, and despite the fact that he’d known it was a bad idea, he hadn’t been able to say  _ no _ . He’d been too anxious and then too nauseous from the pain to eat much, and as soon as Olivia had finished her own food and retreated to her office, he’d made a beeline for the closest place he thought he had any shot at privacy. Rollins hadn’t come in until after he’d finished throwing up, so he supposes he’d chosen fairly well.

The look on her face is complicated, sympathetic and disbelieving and still a little annoyed all at the same time, and she turns to Fin.

“You’ve been helping him?”

“When I can.”

“Okay.” She looks at Rafael. “I’ll help too.”

“You don’t have to.”

She shrugs, and he’s deeply envious of the false casualness in her voice when she says, “Three people will probably be able to do a better job than two. Plus, if it’s only going to get worse than this-” She gestures at Rafael, sitting on the ground with his legs sprawled out in front of him, and the trash can next to him, reeking sourly of coffee and acid- “You’re going to need all the help you can get.

\-------------

“We think you should tell Carisi.”

“Why exactly?” He looks up from his paperwork at the three of them standing in front of his desk.

“If two people helping you is better than one, shouldn’t three people be better than two?”

“No, that’s not necessarily how this works at all.”

“Okay, but if we tell Carisi, that means we only need to distract Liv whenever it happens, instead of worrying about both of them.”

It’s not that he’s entirely opposed to the suggestion, but he does wish she hadn’t made it in front of Carisi himself, who is now looking between the three of them with confusion.

“Anybody want to explain to me what we’re talking about?”

Rafael sighs. It doesn’t feel any less strange to explain what is going on every time he has to, but at least now he’s had a few chances to practice the speech.

“Huh.” Carisi says once he’s finished. He tilts his head, considering. “That’s weird.”

“That’s what I said,” Fin says, and Rollins laughs.

“Our ADA is experiencing a magical compulsion to tell the truth, that’s what we all said at some point.”

“No, I mean, that is weird, but I was talking about how in stories, this kind of thing usually happens to people who lie a lot.”

“What stories?”

“Well, there’s, uh…” He mumbles something that Rafael doesn’t catch.

“What?”

“ _ Liar, Liar. _ ”

“That Jim Carrey movie?” Fin says, and Rafael glares at Carisi.

“You’re comparing me to Jim Carrey now?”

“No! There’s other stories too. I’m just saying, usually this happens to people who are big-time liars. You’re not that at all.”

“Well, thank you for the compliment,” he says, and Rollins laughs. “What?”

“Nothing. It’s just- you can’t lie. You have to say what you mean, which means you can’t be sarcastic.”

Once Carisi realizes what she’s saying, he beams, and Rafael wonders if a mysterious compulsion to tell the truth is a valid reason to be put into a medically induced coma for a few weeks.

\--------------

They’re all in his office the next morning. He’s not sure why they’ve all decided to gather here, since it hadn’t been his idea to have a strategy session, so he’s working while they talk. Or at least he’s trying to.

“So I did some research last night,” Carisi says, and Barba looks up from the notes he’s been starting at for the past few minutes.

“You did what?”

“I did some research. On truth curses.”

“How?”

“The internet.”

Fin laughs. “Streaming  _ Liar, Liar _ doesn’t really count as research.”

“I didn’t watch a movie, I did actual research. Like I said, there’s plenty of stories about this sort of thing. Most of them, again like I said, are about habitual liars and conmen who are forced into telling the truth so they can learn lessons about honesty and mend their ways, but some of them are helpful because they’re about someone who is keeping a secret or not being honest about something, and it’s causing them or someone else emotional or, you know, metaphorical pain, and the curse forces them to feel physical pain instead so they’ll take action.”

All three of them look at Rafael, and he really wishes the curse would let him say  _ Why would that be helpful in this situation _ ?

“I’m not going to tell her.”

“Even though it would solve more than one problem?”

“It might create as many problems as it would solve.”

Rollins shrugs. “Your current problem just keeps getting worse and worse, you sure you don’t want to take a chance on a different one?”

“I’m not going to tell her,” he repeats, using that truth to hold back another one, which is that it doesn’t really feel like he has a choice anymore. And he can deal with the embarrassment and especially the pain better than he can stomach the feeling of helplessness that wells up every time the curse tries to force him to tell Olivia that he loves her, tries to force him to blurt out something he’s always tried to be so careful with, that’s so important to both of them.

Rollins gives him a look, but she turns back to Carisi, who is still going on about his research. and there’s something comforting in all that. Carisi’s research and Rollins staying even though she’s annoyed with him and the fact that they’d all believed him, even Fin, who’d had no one’s word to take but his. Rafael hates pretty much everything about this, but being reminded that he has people on his side isn’t so bad.

\-----------

He presses his hand against the table as the edges of his vision go fuzzy. Thankfully, Olivia is already distracted talking to Carisi about their current case, but he sees her glance at him out of the corner of her eye.

The other three detectives, Rita, and he have done their best to keep his situation under wraps, and they’ve been fairly successful, although how quickly and intensely the pain sets in now is starting to become a real problem. Yesterday Olivia had suggested a working lunch, and since the others had all been out of the precinct and he hadn’t had anything true he could say to avoid it, by the end of the hour he’d been on the verge of passing out from the pain.

It’s not quite as bad today, but he needs to leave sooner rather than later. He catches Olivia’s eye, which is easy because she’s still watching him.

“I should go,” he says, holding up the folders she’d handed him a few minutes ago, “I need to get to work on these.”

“Alright. Are you s-?” She cuts herself off, and Rafael sighs. He can’t imagine Olivia could have possibly guessed what is actually going on, but she’s obviously realized  _ something _ is up. Furthermore, that’s the fifth or sixth time she’s stopped herself in the middle of a question in the past few days, which means that she’s good enough at her job, that she knows him well enough to have realized that questions make him anxious.

“Okay,” she starts again, doing an almost flawless job at keeping her emotions out of her voice, “We’ll call you with any updates.”

“And I’ll let you know once I’ve had a chance to look through these.”

He wishes he could think of anything he could manage to actually say that would comfort her, but there’s nothing, and once he’s out of the bullpen, he takes advantage of the fact that he’s alone to rest his forehead against the cool metal of the doors while he waits for the elevator.

“It’s because she can tell something is up with you.”

“Excuse me?” He turns to find that Rollins has followed him out into the hall.

“Liv’s upset because she can tell that something is going on with you, but you’re not telling her what it is. Even though she’s your best friend, and even though she can tell that you’ve told other people.”

“I know. I’m not trying to hurt her.”

“Then why not just  _ tell her _ , Barba? Is it some bullshit where you think if you suffer enough you’ll be worthy of her?”

“No.”

“Good. Because if it was, I was gonna have to kick your ass, and you’ve got enough going on right now.” She glares at him, like she thinks that somehow he’s chose this moment to resist the curse and lie to her. “Only Liv gets to decide who is and isn’t worthy of her.”

“I know that too.”

Rollins scoffs, shaking her head. “I don’t know if it makes any difference, but I think you should tell her.”

“About the truth curse or about the fact that I’m in love with her?”

She shrugs. “Pretty much the same thing, aren’t they? Have a good day, Barba.” With a wave, she disappears back into the bullpen, leaving him standing by the elevators.

\---------------

“You know that Rollins is right.” Rafael takes a drink of his scotch. He doesn’t bother responding to her because they’ve had this same conversation for the past three nights. “I know Rollins is right. Olivia, who doesn’t even know what is going on, probably still somehow knows that Rollins is right.”

“Regardless of what we all know, I’m not going to tell her.”

“Why not? I know it’s not fair to ask when you have to answer me, but God, Rafael, I really want to know. My friend is hurting and he won’t do anything to stop it.”

“Because I have to answer you!” he says, downing the rest of his scotch, “Because I want to tell Liv I love her all the time, not just when I want to say the actual words. Because she’s one of the most important people in my life and when I tell her I love her for the first time, I don’t want it to be because I don’t have control of my own damn mouth because of some ridiculous curse. I want it to be because we’ve made a decision, because we’ve talked and we’re on the same page, not because I’m overcome in the bullpen because she congratulates me on a case and I can’t help myself.”

“This is really all because you just want it to be  _ special _ ?”

“I want it to be  _ mine _ .  _ Ours _ . I want it to be my choice. Liv… Liv knows how I feel, how important she is to me. And I know I’m important to her. We don’t need to say anything just for the sake of saying it.”

“Fuck,” Rita says, signaling to the bartender, “I really hate that you have a good reason. But Rafael?”

“Hmm?” he replies, lifting his refilled glass to his mouth.

“Sometimes it’s good to say things just for the sake of saying things. I know that sounds like the sort of emotional bullshit I usually give you crap for, but it’s true. Even if you both understand things unsaid, even if you’re scared, sometimes it’s good to make the choice to say what you want to say.”

\-------------

He looks up at the knock to find Olivia leaning against his doorframe, and somehow he knows.

“Which one of them told you?”

“Fin, but I think it was a group decision. Plus Rita called. They’re all worried about you.”

“Nice to know they care, even if they did sell me out.”

He’s too exhausted to muster much real anger at any of them, especially since he’d figured from the start that one of them would tell her eventually if he couldn’t figure out a way to get rid of the curse quickly enough. At least this way, Olivia is asking specific questions and he’ll have better control of his answers.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She’s still standing in the doorway, and he recognizes the edge in her voice as hurt.

“You’re my best friend.”

“Sounds more like a reason to tell me than a reason not to.”

“I didn’t want to ruin anything.”

Olivia takes two steps into his office and stops. “Rita said you’re in pain.”

“Sometimes.”

“Around me?”

“Yes.” He can see her struggling with whether or not to ask the next question, and he answers it before she can make her decision. “There’s something true that I’ve never said to you because it’s important and I’m scared. And now when I don’t tell you, my chest aches.”

“Maybe,” she says, coming to stand in front of his desk,” Maybe, I don’t know, maybe it would be better if I-”

“No. That wouldn’t make anything better.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“Yes I do. I know you, Liv.”

“I’m causing you pain.”

“No, I’m causing me pain. And you avoiding me wouldn’t make anything less painful.”

“Wow,” Olivia says, smiling a little, “You really are under a truth curse.”

“It’s been an experience.”

“Well, if you don’t want me to avoid you, you want to come over for dinner tonight? I promise to keep the direct questions to a minimum.”

“That sounds great.” He’s aware that this is pretty much the exact situation he’s been doing his best to avoid the past few weeks, but he reasons that this is different, in the comfortable confines of her apartment and not at work. Besides, he does want to have dinner with her and Noah, and trying to talk his way around that right now makes him feel even more exhausted just thinking about it. “Although, with the way my luck has gone with this thing, this will be the night Noah asks where babies come from.”

She laughs, and pain sparkles across his chest. He thinks it might be worth it.

\------------

Rafael finishes his drink and slides the empty tumbler onto the coffee table, slumping down a little in his corner of Olivia’s couch, as comfortable as he’s been in weeks. Dinner had gone well, with Noah handling most of the conversation, and then they’d worked on a puzzle until Rafael had read Noah his bedtime stories. Now he and Olivia are relaxing on the couch with their drinks, although he can tell she has something on her mind. He’s not worried about it though, not here, not now that Olivia knows the truth, not now that she’s fully on his side again.

“You want more scotch?”

“I’m good,” he says, smiling, meaning it in more ways than one, and he leans his head back against the couch, closing his eyes and enjoy the feeling of hers on him.

“Maybe I should kiss you?”

Under normal circumstances, he’d make a joke, maybe, or a sound that he’d mean to be disbelieving and would probably get caught between that and agreement. Something that they could pretend never happened when they once again found themselves outside of the warm, comfortable bubble they’d made for themselves on her couch.

Of course, under normal circumstances, she would never say it in the first place.

And Rafael certainly would never smile softly at her and say, “I’d like that very much.”

But these aren’t normal circumstances.

Rafael sits up, clenching his hands to try and stop their shaking.

“I shouldn’t have said that. It’s true but I shouldn’t have said it.” He looks at Olivia, still comfortably tucked into the opposite corner of the couch. “Why did  _ you _ say that?”

She shrugs, lifting her wineglass to her lips. “That’s how it works in stories, right? True love’s kiss breaks the spell?”

“That’s… I- You… I suppose.”  _ True love’s kiss _ , just the phrase alone, nevermind any of the implications attached to it, coming from Olivia, is doing funny things to his brain.

“So I think we should try it. You have any better ideas?” She sits up, shifts closer to him on the couch.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a single better idea in my whole life. Fuck. Liv…” he says, almost falling off the couch when she scoots closer again, knees almost touching his.

“Seriously Rafa, what are you afraid of?”

“That you’re joking.” He’s said some pretty embarrassing things in the past few weeks, but this feels by far the most pathetic. And he’s exactly as helpless to stop himself as he has been every other time. “That you’re not being serious. That you don’t know what’s happening with me but you want to fix it because that’s what you do, you fix things, so you’re just saying whatever pops into your head first and-”

Olivia is very close now, having moved while he was busy spilling his guts, and he would keep doing it except he’s distracted by her closeness and her smile.

“Did you ask yourself why it might have been the first thing that popped into my head?”

“No. I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

“And if I said you should?”

“That’s… I…” He’s not resisting anything, or trying to lie. The truth is just that he’s too dumbfounded to come up with any sort of response. “Liv…”

“Rafa,” she responds, laughing, and she’s so close that he can feel the vibrations of it against his mouth, “Will you just let me kiss you already?”

“Okay,” he says, and Olivia laughs again, but when she presses her mouth against his she’s soft and sure, and he leans into it as easy as breathing.

After a few seconds she pulls back, and he doesn’t have to open his eyes to know she’s smiling, but he does anyway.

“So, did it work?”

“I don’t-” He’s planning some crack about how she should try again, just to be sure, but pain lances across his chest, worse than it’s ever been. He doubles over from the force of it, and only Olivia catching him by the shoulders keeps him from falling off the couch.

“Rafa?”

“Sorry.” He forces himself as upright as he can manage. Olivia runs her hands along his shoulders so that she can cradle his face between her hands.

“Don’t apologize.” She runs her thumb across his cheek. “Rafa, you should say it.”

If he’s being truthful, even just with himself, he’s not surprised she knows what he’d meant in his office that afternoon. After all, he’d told Rita that they understood the things they hadn’t said yet.

“I don’t want to,” he gasps, and it’s only when her face falls that he realizes how that sounded. He catches her wrists when he feels her start to pull away. “No, Liv, no. I meant I don’t want to say it because of this.”

“Even if I want you to?” She’s smiling, but there are tears in her eyes, and he wishes he could say or do something to comfort her, but the ache in his chest is so bad all he can do is look at her and hold on to her and breathe. “Even if I want you to stop hurting like this?”

“Especially because you want me to say it.”

She grins, one hand trailing down his neck to rest at the center of his chest, rubbing gently. It eases some of the tightness there, enough that he can finally manage a full breath, and he can see her thinking.

“Liv, you don’t have to fix everything.”

“But I can try to fix this,” she says, curling her fingers into his shirt in order to tug him closer so she can press her mouth against his. He relaxes into her as her other hand slides into his hair.

“Does this help?” Olivia asks after a few minutes, although she doesn’t actually stop kissing him, so he’s having trouble concentrating on the question.

“What?”

“Does this help? With the pain, I mean.”

He almost laughs, except he realizes that the sharp edges of the pain have gone soft.

“Yeah. Yeah, it does.”

“Okay.” She shifts up onto her knees. “This alright?”

He laughs as she lifts one leg so she can straddle his lap. “Yeah, it’s great. You planning on kissing me all night?”

“Considering it.”

He loses track of time pretty quickly. It’s hard to concentrate on time or the pain in his chest when there are so many better things to concentrate on: her hands in his hair, against his chest, her mouth on his, her weight in his lap. She shifts, settling more solidly against him and ducking her head to kiss along his jaw, and his hips buck up involuntarily into the new pressure. The soft sound she makes near his ear makes him almost dizzy with desire.

“Sorry,” he pants, and Olivia laughs.

“You keep apologizing for things you don’t need to.” She catches his jaw between her palms again. “Maybe we should go to bed.”

“Liv, I- You know I want to, but I’m not sure if, right now-”

She cuts him off with a kiss. “No, we’ll wait on that. But lying down might make you feel better.”

“You make me feel better.”

“Good thing I’ll be there then. And you might not be able to fall asleep, but your chances are better in bed than out here.”

Olivia lends him a pair of sweatpants, and he ducks into the bathroom to change into them and strip down to his undershirt. When he emerges, she’s already curled up in bed, and once he’s stretched out next to her, she slides her hand across his chest, thumb rubbing softly at the spot just below his sternum. Rafael wonders if she somehow knows that the pain has centralized there.

“You should sleep,” he says, watching her fight to keep her eyes open.

“You’ll be okay?”

“Yeah.” He shifts to press a kiss against her hair. “I’m great.”

\-----------

He gets more sleep than he thought he would, or at least the sleep he manages is more restful than he expected. And it’s not like lying in Olivia’s bed with her in between bouts of dozing is a hardship.

Around seven, the lingering pain and his circadian rhythm mean he’s awake for good, and he slips out of the bed, wanting to let Olivia sleep in on her day off. He pads into the kitchen to start coffee, and he’s just wondering if making breakfast is too presumptive or too cliche or too  _ something  _ when he hears footsteps from down the hallway. Noah is standing at the edge of the kitchen, rubbing at his eyes.

“Uncle Rafa? Why are you here?”

“Well,” he says, after a few seconds of thought, “I wanted pancakes for breakfast, and I thought I’d come see if you wanted some too.”

Noah’s eyes light up, and Rafael can’t help but laugh. He wonders how long it will be, if this thing ever actually goes away, before he stops reflexively screening his words like that.

But he doesn’t need to worry about that right now, so he makes a mess in the kitchen cooking pancakes with Noah and then he lets him have what is probably way too much maple syrup. Once they’ve finished eating, Rafael sets him up in front of the television and gets to work cleaning up. He can’t regret the mess, not with how much Noah had laughed or how much fun he himself had had, but he doesn’t want Olivia to have to worry about it.

He’s almost finished with the dishes when she wraps her arms around him from behind, pressing herself against his back.

“You didn’t wake me up for pancakes?”

“Thought you would want to sleep in. I can make you some if you want,” he says, but she shakes her head, tightens her embrace around his waist.

“I’m good. How are you?”

“Tired. But good. Great. Spectacular.” She pinches him, but then she flattens her hand out and rubs softly at his chest.

“You could go home if you want. Sleep for a while.”

“I’d rather be here with you and Noah. Plus I promised him I’d go to the park with him.”

“We should at least stop by your apartment, get you some clothes.”

“What, you don’t think yesterday’s undershirt and your sweatpants is a good look for me?”

“It’s a very good look for you. I’m a little… possessive of it.”

“Yeah? I like that.” Her fingers curl into his shirt and lifts his hands to cover hers.

“When we stop by your apartment, you could get pajamas too. And a suit for tomorrow. If you want,” she adds, uncertainty creeping into her voice right at the end, and he tightens his hands around hers, intertwines their fingers.

“Not willing to lend me your sweatpants anymore?”

Olivia spreads her hand out against his stomach, and Rafael’s breath catches.

“I think I’d rather take them off you.”

“I like that too.”

“Shocking,” she drawls, but he can feel her smiling against his shoulder, and she shifts to press a kiss against the back of his neck, “Come on, we should go before we get carried away. Noah, can you go get ready for the park?”

“Is Uncle Rafa coming?”

“Definitely, buddy. We just have to stop by my apartment so I can get some new clothes.”

“Why?”

“I can’t wear the same clothes two days in a row. Would your mom ever let you do that?”

“No, that’s silly,” he giggles, and he lets Olivia herd him into his room to change.

Once they actually make it to the park, Rafael pushes Noah on the swings for awhile, and then he has to beg off after just a few minutes of playing in the sandbox because he can’t stop yawning. Sitting on a bench with Olivia helps a little, but by the time they get lunch he’s struggling not to fall asleep face first in his food.

Luckily, between the early morning and all the running around at the park, Noah looks as ready for a nap as Rafael feels. While Olivia gets her son settled in his room, he changes into the pajamas he’d picked up from his apartment. When she emerges from Noah’s room, he’s standing nervously in the doorway of hers.

“I didn’t want to make any assumptions,” he says and Olivia laughs.

“Come on, Barba,” she says, grabbing his hand and tugging him into the room, “Let’s put those pajamas to good use.”

He’s on the edge of sleep only a few minutes after crawling into the bed, but he wakes up a bit when he feels Olivia crawl in next to him.

“You don’t have anything you need to get done? I don’t want you wasting your whole day off on me.”

“It’s not a waste, and there’s nothing that can’t wait,” she says, curling up against his side and tracing a finger along the faint outline of his crucifix beneath his shirt.

“What about Noah?”

“He knows to come get me if he wakes up and needs something.”

“And you’re okay with him knowing we’re… You’re okay with him seeing me here?”

“We’re just sleeping, Rafa. We can talk to him about things later if you want, but I’m not worried.”

Lying there with Olivia, warm and comfortable and overtired, it takes Rafael several minutes to realize something.

His chest doesn’t hurt.

He doesn’t know when the ache had dissipated, but it’s gone. What’s more, even lying here with Olivia’s head on his shoulder and his fingers combing lazily through the ends of her hair, it doesn’t return.

“Hey, Liv?”

“Hmm.”

“I love you.”

Olivia laughs softly. “No fair, saying it when I’m half asleep.”

“Sorry. I couldn’t hold it in any longer.” She lifts her head, a stricken look on her face, and he immediately lifts a hand to her cheek. “No, not like that. Strictly metaphorically speaking. Truth curse didn’t leave a lot of room for metaphors.”

Grinning now, she shifts to lie down next to him and he turns on his side to face her.

“So it’s gone?”

“Seems like it.” Rafael leans forward to kiss her. “You’re a magic cure, Olivia Benson.”

“I try my best.” She slides a hand around his neck to keep him close, like he needs any encouragement to do so. “I think maybe you’re just delusional from lack of sleep.”

After another longer kiss, they resettle so that her head is on his shoulder again, and he ducks his face down against her hair.

“Maybe I’m just in love.”

Olivia laughs, snuggling closer, and they lapse into silence again. He’s just on the edge of sleep when he feels her shift to look up at him.

“Rafa?”

“Huh?”

“I love you too.”

The last thing he’s aware of before he drifts off is Olivia’s hand rubbing gently at his chest.

Noah does wake them up a few hours later, but the only comment he has is about Rafael’s bedhead. The three of them watch a movie together, and then Rafael and Olivia get started on dinner while Noah works on his spelling homework. He’s just thinking that this might be a perfect day off when Noah turns, perched up on his knees to look at them over the back of the couch.

“Uncle Rafa, are you staying for dinner?”

He looks over at Olivia, who is smiling. “If your mom will have me, buddy.”

She sets down the spoon she’s using and reaches over to catch his shirt with her fingertips. He’s grinning when she kisses him, and his smile only grows when she whispers against his mouth.

“I think I will.”

Definitely perfect.

\------------

“Hey, wait up a second.”

Carisi, Rollins, and Fin all turn to look at him, and he’s glad that Olivia is in a meeting right now. This is actually easier to do alone than it would be if she was here. He’s already sent Rita the largest and most obnoxious bouquet he could find that didn’t involve a costume or anyone singing, and he’d promised to take her out to dinner some time to make up for that.

“I just wanted to tell the three of you thanks for all your help. I’m not sure what I would have done without you guys, but I think things would have been a lot worse if you hadn’t helped.”

He’s expecting jokes, or at least smiles, but Fin and Carisi just glance at Rollins, who is looking at the ground.

“What?”

“Nothing. Glad we could help. But you still had a pretty hard time with it.”

He shrugs. “You guys tried your best, and I appr-” Fin laughs. “What?”

“Nothing. Just-” He turns to Rollins. “You want to tell him or should I?”

“Tell me what?”

“It’s nothing, like Fin said.”

“Doesn’t seem like it. Seems like it’s some-”

“We weren’t trying our best,” Carisi blurts out, and Rollins glares at him. “What? He’s being all sincere even though he’s not truth cursed anymore, and I feel bad now.”

“What do you mean you weren’t trying your best?” Rafael asks, and the three of them share a look before Rollins sighs.

“There were a couple times where we… didn’t try our best. Where we thought maybe, if you got a little push you might… talk to Liv.”

“Like when?”

“Well, I didn’t actually have to reinterview that witness during lunch the other day,” Carisi says, “We just thought that maybe if you spent some time alone with Lieu, you’d… talk to her.”

“It was Rita Calhoun’s idea, really,” Rollins says, and Fin laughs.

“It was Rollins’ idea too.”

Rollins turns to glare at him. “Did you suddenly get hit with a truth curse too?”

“I’m just naturally honest.”

“Yeah, well, things worked out, didn’t they?” Rollins says, and Rafael fights a blush.

When he and Olivia had walked in together this morning, her entire squad had done their best not to look like they’d been waiting for them. It had been a lot easier not to be embarrassed with Olivia at his side, but he does his best. It’s not anything to be ashamed of.

“I appreciate all you guys did, and I’m never asking any of you for non-work related help ever again.”

Carisi looks a little hurt, but Fin just shrugs.

“That’s fair.”

\-------------

Rafael blinks himself awake, his head in Olivia’s lap and her fingers running through his hair.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“Again with the apologizing. I don’t mind, I know you need it.”

“Still, I feel like I kissed you and then I’ve spent at least half the time since sleeping.”

“First of all, I kissed you, and secondly, I like that you’re comfortable enough to sleep here. I didn’t get to see you like this, before I kissed you. Plus I like sitting here and thinking of questions that you can answer with ridiculous lies now.”

He smiles up at her softly. “I’m sorry. I know, I know,” he says when she gives him a look, “But I am. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what was going on, and I’m sorry it took all of this to tell you how I felt.”

“I didn’t tell you either. It was… It’s hard and scary, because we’re important, but when it came right down to it, it was… easy. And now we can figure out the hard and scary parts together, and enjoy the easy parts.”

“I like that,” he says, shifting up to kiss her.

As she kisses him back, one of her hands slides into his hair to pull him closer and the other settles gently at the center of his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> This turned out shorter and less intricate than I think the original idea was in my head, and the pacing is uhhhhh probably a little fast, but I also enjoy how extremely soft the end bits are, so we're gonna call it, I don't know, a draw on the whole thing? I think the metaphor got away from a little bit, but I hope you guys enjoy and it doesn't feel too fast or like I'm asking for too much suspension of disbelief.
> 
> Title comes from [The Ship in Port](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc2-x8qUXm4) which is one of several Radical Face songs on my [Barson playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6MYYTMxD7SN1NhoKC0G7iL) and is so Barson that I also titled a chapter from soulmate!au with a lyric from it. Up next from me is more chapters of knights!au and probably marriage pact fic (which incidentally also probably has a Radical Face title). You can find also me at [twitter](https://twitter.com/awkspiritanimal) or [tumblr](http://awkwardspiritanimals.tumblr.com).


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